Coffee N5 - Csaba Lucas

Episode 118 – Coffee N5 – The Art of Storytelling in Every Business and Our Lives with Csaba Lucas

In this episode of Coffee N°5, we welcome Csaba Lucas, a successful coach and speaker who defines himself as a father, a husband, an American, a Hungarian, a Canadian, a traveler, a researcher, an educator, an athlete and a lifelong student with 30 years of experience – advising Wall Street business leaders and companies, world class athletes and teams, and people who desire to live healthy with passion and vitality. 

What we’ll talk about:

  • Storytelling and how important it is for your business.
  • The downside of success stories. 
  • Connecting the now to the future. 
  • How we can change to a more human-driven mindset.

For more information subscribe to Casba Lucas on Youtube or visit his website

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Twitter: @LaraSchmoisman

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Lara Schmoisman  00:05

This is coffee number five. I’m your host flourish Wiseman. It’s all about you and I want you to succeed. Download today, my exclusive Insiders Guide to generate in business relationships that last and turns into sales. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to coffee number five. I’m so excited that we’re here having coffee in this new season of coffee number five. And as you know, I always pride myself are bringing the experts people that I really will trust with my business that people that I will go for advice. As eo is now I believe in giving, I believe in giving in mentorship, I believe. I mean, once in a while, I don’t care of giving free advice and talking to people. And I really believe that if you know what you’re doing, and you know where you’re standing, you don’t mind to share with others your knowledge. I think I told the story once you know before, but when I was starting production, I was told I was a producer in my previous life. And I was told your phonebook is the most valuable thing. So if you can get any phone number of any important people, actors, celebrities, whoever you get them and you put it in your phonebook. And if someone will give you their phonebook, you say yes, please, and you copy a new habit because that information is called. And you know what, after a while, I realized that bullshit, I realized that nobody will pick up the phone if you don’t know who you are. And you’re the NBL that relationship with them. And they they interest you. So today, I’m so excited that we I thought an incredible guest for you guys. I got Casper Lucas. Hi, welcome to party number five.

Csaba Lucas  02:02

Hey, how are you? So yes, thank you so much for having me here. And this is really funny what you were your intro intro I really liked and Hungaria we have a saying that if you want to get to know someone, look at their friends and look at their bookshelves, you know. So it also belongs to that I mean, the you know, the list of people you can have in your in your phonebook, right? That’s one thing that’s more important are the who are the people? Who are your friends? Who are the people who you can call? And they actually answer doesn’t matter what, right. And if you look at those groups of people, then you can really get to know someone, and if you can take a peek at their bookshelves, then you really get to know what they are interested,

Lara Schmoisman  02:42

oh my God, look at my bookshelf, they’re gonna think I’m crazy. Because I can say anything that it comes to my hands.

Csaba Lucas  02:50

You know what I was happy about that. I recently, we just moved recently, after 14 years, and I had the good fortune to reorganize all my books, and I have insane amount of books. And I realized I have a big chunk in my library, written by people who I consider my friends. And that made me so happy. Yeah, it’s big, because you know, when you write a book, and you know, I had the good fortune to write a book before. And that’s when you really realize how much of an entry, the writer allows you into their mind into their head in the right headspace their experiences their life experience, right. And that’s what and if you haven’t written the book, you don’t really know, the level of intimacy, that intimacy that individual, the writer, the author provides you through their book. And I think if people everyone would write a book, they would realize, Oh, my God, I really have the entry in this individual’s heart into their mind. Right. And then suddenly, you appreciate every single written piece much more. Yeah, I’m always from subject.

Lara Schmoisman  03:56

I’ve been in this process of writing a book, like forever. And it’s always going back and forth. It’s like how much you can explain because when you’re talking about facts in your life, in order to understand your life, they need to be in your shoes. So it’s impossible basically, to understand it. So you try and to, to get that storytelling going. And you see what I did here, I brought up the subject that also your your master office storytelling, and I was lucky enough that I was at one of your talks to be added matter, which I loved. And that’s when I approached you and I asked you, I want you on my podcast. So tell me a little more about this art of storytelling and how and how important it is for your business and for to run your own business.

Csaba Lucas  04:50

Okay, so Well, I actually want to go further. Because if you connect science and our ancient background as Homo sapiens sapiens, this specie who we are, storytelling kind of falls in line bringing these two different concepts together, which is basically what I love about what I do to be able to bring science and you know, our background or ancestry and find the overlaps there. And whatever overlaps. That’s where I tried to develop tools, you know, as a coach as a guide. So, storytelling, we know scientifically that the human brain learns most effectively when it’s connected to some sort of stories, right? So storytelling, it’s not about me as a coach, or Hollywood, or screenwriters, storytelling is important to master to good degree, if you want to communicate properly, to your kids, to your co workers, to anyone in your life. Storytelling is the way how you can communicate what you desire for others to really understand. Right. And the funny thing is, right up until about 99.9% of our evolutionary past, as a species, that is how we taught others. This is how we exposed others to our own experiences. This is how we taught kids, this is how we, we kind of developed new capabilities, right? So storytelling is not just an idea, a luxury, it’s a necessary necessity for us as human beings. And luckily, because of my work, I guess, I have the luxury of having to be relatively decent edit airmar. Well, thank you. Thank you. I mean, you know, the funny thing is, Laura, you know, we haven’t talked about this in the past, but I never really planned on doing what I’m doing, which is being a coach and an advisor for companies and individuals and teams, it just kind of ended up being this because I had a quite different idea. What I wanted to do in life, which is basically I was very interested about physical capabilities, I was very interested about science, and very interested about arts, all of these three things I started early on as when I was a kid to kind of dig in there. And, you know, society kind of gives you a framework, which most of us when we are kids, we think with that framework, society tells you, this is what you’re supposed to do. And you as a good kid, you’re like, Okay, so I’m going to work within those frameworks. Now. But what happened during the last 30 years, the framework was kind of busted open, because we, you know, have like the internet, social media, to all kinds of stuff. So jobs that we do today, didn’t exist 3040 years ago,

Lara Schmoisman  07:38

my job then exist, actually my first degrees in screenwriting, and I’m so happy that I have that degree. And anyone who wants to do marketing, I suggest them to do screenwriting, because it really taught me how to think about how my target audience will receive a message as a character. Exactly shows you how important this is storytelling in every to get to your market audience.

Csaba Lucas  08:10

Yeah, no, I mean, I completely agree with you. And you know, I would have never, if I would have wanted to be a coach, I would have never learned about storytelling, because seemingly, it’s not necessarily a no an overlap, right, Coach is all about problem solving, you know, at least on the surface, but deep down, it’s really about trying to help people to get something and they can only really get it if it’s connected to a story, you know, and so it’s all about storytelling. So the only reason I decent about storytelling because I had the background, I actually have a degree in performance art. And I went to Juilliard, and all kinds of different places, right, where as a sort of like a side gig, looking back now in my life, it really wasn’t my main focus, but it taught me so much, which I can utilize with everyone, with my kids, with my clients, with my friends, with my wife, right? Because storytelling is just makes everything easily accessible. And also fun. While you’re while you’re teaching while you’re sharing your experience.

Lara Schmoisman  09:14

I always try to put things in place and I use storytelling a lot to explain it my team and my clients about situations because I believe that when you get into the story and you understand the players and the twists and the conclusion of the story, you understand better the problem so I always use storytelling as part of explaining situations that in in many cases him and my husband was our told me always you have to tell the story to explain things. And I say yes, I feel like people will understand better, but at the same time, I wonder what is to work with a coach that helps businesses How can you help business? How can you help those individuals in business using storytelling? And all the science that you can combat you combine?

Csaba Lucas  10:10

Yeah, I mean, you know, that’s an interesting question. You know, as I told you, I never really planned on becoming a coach. But I’ve been coaching for over 30 years now, which makes me sound so old. I’m not that old. I was just somehow I fell into this early on, and ended up keep making sense of continuing it. And eventually,

Lara Schmoisman  10:30

that’s in computer they are.

Csaba Lucas  10:34

I know, I know. Well, that’s good. That’s that’s basically means I maybe understand about anti aging something, which is not a bad thing. You know, these interested, you know,

Lara Schmoisman  10:44

makes you feel better. When I started my first job in radio was more than 30 years ago.

Csaba Lucas  10:49

So good. So we both understand about anti aging, something

Lara Schmoisman  10:53

I started really early.

Csaba Lucas  10:56

Oh, I see. Okay, yeah. Can we add maybe that? Well, you know, answering your question about storytelling, and coaching and advising companies and individuals, you know, I, I actually have fallen into guiding and coaching people who are extremely successful and very wealthy. I didn’t really set out for that, but that’s how it happened. And I know it sounds like a little bit ridiculous of a thing. But it is just what it is. So when people ask me, how did you get that? You know, I mean, I had the good fortune to sit with one of the ex heads of the FBI, head of one of the major banks in the world. And you know, a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and me, the four of us working on a pot project together, right. And I was there as an advisor for this particular project. And I was sitting there and was looking at, and then thinking about that for a second, I was like, How did I manage doing this, I really need to dig in there and understand, because I certainly did not plan it. I mean, I love it. Of course, who wouldn’t like to be at the table like that, where people who are so much on the top of their game, are really thinking about a project, and I can sit down and try to add my own wisdom to it, right. And I think the way how this works is like that. People who are successful, usually are not taught, honestly, to, you know, everyone wants something from people who are successful. And, and if you’re not like that, and somehow you find a way to be authentic, and be willing to be honest. And you will provide the proper feedback loop to them, which usually successful people don’t get, because everyone wants something from them. So people usually try to tell them what they want to hear, versus what what truly their opinion is. And somehow I fell into this lucky situation, that I was always able to be very honest to people, you know. And and I guess that’s what ended up working during the past 30 years for me. And that’s what made me realize that what is the downside of success, which is interesting subject, it’s really, really interesting to me, because the downside of success is a broken feedback loop. And what happens in any system and there’s a broken feedback loop, there is toxicity that starts to happen. If you just look at plants, if you look at mushrooms, if you look at the animal kingdom, if you look at the human body, if you look at systems, when there is no proper feedback loop, there is a toxicity start to happen, which ends up killing the system itself. So being successful, you start to put people around you who tells you Yes, all the time, you know, or people are scared telling you because of the way how you conduct yourself. But they honestly think you are killing the full feedback loop from your company, from your family, from your friendships, your social, you know, connection.

Lara Schmoisman  13:58

Let’s let’s put in I mean,

Csaba Lucas  14:01

success comes with a price. Any kind of success? Yeah, you know what? No, no, no, no, no, I disagree with you, Laura. Because we have to define success. You know, the way how I define success is the following. If you make a lot of money, I will come sorry, it’s not success. Because the most miserable people who I’ve met in my entire life are not the people who don’t have money, the people who have extremely huge amount of funds and money available to them and they were the most miserable people. So in my book as a coach, that’s not success. Neither were me. Right? So success when it comes to the price that means you have a not a holistic success in your life. Holistic success does not come into price, because not making more money, but making as much as you need in your life and what you’re happy with right now So that, that means that you don’t necessarily worry about making more. So it’s not you don’t feel like it came with a sacrifice or you know, you don’t miss out on anything.

Lara Schmoisman  15:12

Well, but you’re saying like that kind of success, like, for example, you’re gonna have people that comes and always want something from you.

Csaba Lucas  15:19

While success based on

Lara Schmoisman  15:21

that, that perception or not only success in financial terms, so when you achieve something, you have an MB toxicity, you have a lot of factors that are a price that if you will be not in the limelight, he wouldn’t be people will see and somehow admire you or hate you, it would be not coming with those little prices. And you you have to because that’s the human nature.

Csaba Lucas  15:49

Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, when it comes to our society today, our Western society, let’s talk about that, you know, because that’s what we have daily experiences with success, the idea of success, most people connect to money and career, right? No one really values. On a societal level, if someone has an amazing relationship with their spouse, they’re like, Oh, that’s nice. But no one is like, you know, what, I’m at 20, I’m going to prepare and focus to make myself capable of developing an amazing spouse or relationship. No one thinks like that at 20. But they think about, oh, my god, I gotta have to really figure out what is the best company so I can succeed and make a lot of money, right? But you and I know, what is the thing that really creates the quality of the experience in most of your days? Well, it’s your relationship with your spouse, it’s your relationship with your kids, your friends, your co workers, right, and how well how much you can focus on those things. Because if you’re constantly worried about your lower back hurting, right, you’re not gonna be able to focus on nearly as well to other aspects of your life. So your physical health is equally important for you to figure out. And then of course, you got to make money. Because if you don’t make money, it will, at least to a certain point, it will affect your happiness quota, your happiness level, right, you need to be able to succeed in your career to a certain degree, because that’s how you express yourself as an active human being. So if you want to succeed, it requires a lot of multifaceted, focuses that you need to split yourself up. Right? And that needs to be based on your value system.

Lara Schmoisman  17:33

But isn’t that like an ecosystem, I always talk about the marketing ecosystem, and I believe that my ecosystem, my personal ecosystem, is my team having a good relationship with my team, that my team has a good relationship with them, and that we have an extremely good company culture, because their values that are important for me is the same values that have in my work, good relationship, a healthy relationship with my spouse, and with my children, even with my dog. That’s a having a your ecosystem in place to everything to get to be balanced, like the world, the sun, the moon and the planets.

Csaba Lucas  18:14

Well, exactly. But how often does that happen? Because I tell you, you know, the people, let’s just talk about the individuals that I work with, since we’re talking seems like more about the individuals, right. So the individuals I work together with are people who are extremely well off when it comes to society’s eyes, yet they reach out to me and say, you know, and this is not something I heard once or twice or 10 times, but many, many, many, many times, which is like, Chava, listen, I am making a lot of money. Everyone looks at me and believes and it’s and it gives me, you know, values me as in my career, what I created. I have my beautiful wife, my kids, I have my Porsche, I have my beautiful house. And I’m sitting here and I’m talking to you that I am so scared because I don’t feel like I have it. I don’t know what I’m missing. Right? And that’s the that’s usually how a lot of times my first time meeting with people Stark, that you know I am. I had everything that society told me to get out of it. Feel like I am? I am I don’t feel it. I’m like, What am I supposed to do now? I have it all. And I don’t feel like I have it all. Why is that? Right? So that’s that’s the problem. That yes, of course, the idea of having good family, good career, making enough money and making good money and all that stuff. In theory. It’s lovely, but no one really practices it. And why not? Because in school, that’s not what schools are teaching us. That’s what schools prepare us for.

Lara Schmoisman  19:53

You are getting there in a whole different conversation that I can be discussing for hours. I I truly believe that our education system is preparing us to work in a cubicle without a window. And that drives me crazy.

Csaba Lucas  20:08

That’s at best, you know, at best, because it’s it’s not it’s not for life. But, you know, it is what it is, I don’t like to look at things ever to things are bad or not perfect. I’m just looking at always everything is part of a process, you know? And when it comes to processes, I like to look at, okay, where do we want to take the processes? And let’s try to connect the now to the future, right, or what we want to develop? Right? And that way, it’s easier to to have more positive mental mindset, as opposed to try to look at what’s bad right now today, try to understand why is it bad? Right? I’m not saying there’s no value to that. But unfortunately, the amount of time people spend on let’s say, spending time with psychologists, right? With the shrink the therapist, what they usually do, they try to dissect and understand where all the problems coming from. But when you think about if you just think about something that happened to you something bad, what does that do to you, it actually makes you takes you right back there. And energetically, it makes you vibrate in a way that it reminds you of that very thing in the past. Now, there’s the balance between focusing on where your patterns coming from, right, it is important. But you know what my problem, my real problem is with that people don’t remember the past the way it happen. They remember the past, as they kind of left a certain event,

Lara Schmoisman  21:42

you remember how you affect us in the past,

Csaba Lucas  21:47

at the very end of the event, like if I tell you, Laura to go for an hour, comfortable run, and let’s say you have actually the capabilities to do that, which I know you do, but maybe someone else doesn’t. So but let’s say the task is for you to go out for one hour, and nice and easy run, you can only breathe through your nose, and really taking it easy with it. You just need to take in nature and enjoy yourself, right? And let’s say you do that for 58 minutes, and you’re like, Oh my God, I feel so good. But after all, this is a workout. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to just give it everything I got for the last two minutes. And you actually do that, then you go for it like a maniac. And your lungs are burning and your muscles are burning by the end and you’re done with the hour. And you stop and you’re like, oh my god, I had a great workout. I feel fantastic. Right? Now, when I asked you how was your workout, let’s say a week later, you’re like, Oh, that was that was good. I really worked up a great workout. It was very hard. I mean, my muscles were burning. It was great. And you know, I did the hour the way you asked, but it was, you know at the end that really pushed it hard, right? So what is that you’re going to remember, are you going to remember the 58 minutes, nice and easy, are the very end how you felt. And this is why you know, I always tell people when it comes to experiences that you’re not you might be you know, celebrity Aliy, you kind of remember things. But emotionally, what you connect with is the way how you left the experience. And that’s important to remember. Because if you had a bad experience with someone, you’re not going to remember the good times, you’re going to remember the very end, the bad times, right? If you didn’t get divorced, you’re not going to remember the first 10 years when everything was working? Well, you’re gonna remember the last 10 years, right? So when you try to develop your future with that individual, we pay attention to all the bad, right? As opposed to well, no, whatever, some really good times too. But let’s just focus on where we want to get to, which is like, I’m not going to be together with this person, but I want to raise my kids with this person, you know, still because we share them. So what is the ideal outcome? Right? How

Lara Schmoisman  23:53

can we change that mindset?

Csaba Lucas  23:57

The change the mindset, well, that’s where our tribes or families or educational system would need to come in, you know, because until we are not taught that early on, we will pattern for different way of looking. Because early on when we are kids right up until about 14 We don’t have the capability of making decisions really about your about our actions, we don’t have the brain yet been developed, our brain didn’t develop to the place where we can do things and then reflect on our actions and make changes. It only starts to happen around 12 and 14. Until that point, all you do is you’re downloading patterns from your environment, your parents, your peers, your teachers, all of these, all of these things from around you. And you develop their behavior patterns. And you give that back to your own behavior. So it’s it’s always funny when people are really pissed off at their kids and screaming at them and their kids are like let’s 10 and the to act out, and the parents are really pissed at the kid, and they don’t realize that what the kid is just giving you the patterns that they downloaded from their environment. So you got to take a good look at yourself and the environment that you created to the kid. Because without the adjusting those environmental, you know, aspect of the kid’s life, you’re not touching on the patterns, but 14 on you will, you actually have now the brain in your life where you can reflect on your own actions and make changes based on your best wisdom, the best wisdom, maybe this is not something I want. So I can change it, theoretically. But since no one telling us that no one is doing it, everyone just continues with the patterns they’ve downloaded in the first 14 years of their lives. And they start to behave and act continues to based on those patterns. And they go to the schools, they start to work the way how the patterns were. And that’s how people end up with lies where they come to me at 4050. And say, I created this slide, and I’m succeeding, but I don’t know why it just doesn’t feel like it’s the thing for me. It’s because unfortunately, you just acted on the patterns, just like the vast majority of the vast majority of people, as opposed to taking the patterns, re examine them, once you have the capability after age of 14. And using your best wisdom to keep making adjustments in your life. Take into account your best wisdom, your dreams, your desires, your wants, right? And they keep making adjustments in your actions. That’s not what we do. We just did no system that tells you that, hey, you can do that. You know, because school, what does school do? School basically tells you don’t run, don’t scream, don’t fight, you know, don’t be too loud. All of those things, as opposed to just develop your authentic self. Right? Because it’s difficult, it’s not easy. I don’t want to do things

Lara Schmoisman  26:57

very difficult. And that’s why one of the motors of my company that our is we break the rules, and why we break, we break the rules, we’ve raised the bar, but why we break the rules on iOS, people think they do something different or extraordinary? No, we have the same tools that everyone else. But how do I do break the rules is the relationship that we have with our clients and with our team. I think that’s, that’s where we are really we’re taught to have certain relationships and the way that certain relationships need to be conducted. And, and that’s where I think that we need to learn to have comfortable relationships, or quote unquote, ever we are interacting.

Csaba Lucas  27:43

Yeah, I mean, breaking the rules is essential for a human being to learn. And unfortunately, society oftentimes doesn’t create the space for that, you know, but without breaking the rules, you won’t be able to become authentic, because you and every individual right is isn’t a separate individual. So you need to express yourself authentically, that’s the only thing you’re going to be comfortable with in life. But that basically means some rules, you will need to break. And you know, and this is what’s so difficult. That’s brings the duality of our world into two, like, into action, because duality is everything in our world, right? Success, lack of success, money, no money, possibilities, no possibilities, keeping with the rules, breaking the rules, all of those things are necessary for a human being to experience to actually be able to lead an authentic, balanced life. Like if you always had the possibilities, because let’s say you were born into a very wealthy family, right? And you always had the possibilities to do whatever you wanted. That person in theory has all the possibilities, but because they never experienced the lack of possibilities, they never value all the possibilities. The only way you can value the possibilities when you had at one point and none of them. Right. So that’s a dualistic way of balancing your life. And as a coach, I like to make people be aware of that. So whenever you have a bad experience with someone understand that well that provides me the opportunity to really have a good experience with another person because that’s the only way you can witness goodness. If you had the bad stuff. The only reasonably can look at an individual and look at them that Oh, what a beautiful person this is look wise because we saw people who are not beautiful. Yeah, therefore Beauty and the lack of it belongs together. You cannot separate them. They are one one whole thing. So embracing duality, breaking the rules and keeping with the rules is the art of of living. That’s what you know mastering the art of living is all about, you know,

Lara Schmoisman  29:58

absolutely Kasbah I always misspell mispronounce

Csaba Lucas  30:05

your name Laura. So don’t even worry I got from hubba bubba cover all kinds of things throughout my entire life and I I like it because I liked people so

Lara Schmoisman  30:17

well imagine me with LRI God, Laura, Sara, Clara, Laura, and let’s not even start it. But thank you so much for being here. Coffee number five is it was amazing to have you here and thank you for sharing and keep breaking the rules.

Csaba Lucas  30:36

Thank you so much, very much. Appreciate it, you know, and all the best due to the podcast going forward

Lara Schmoisman  30:41

to you guys. I will see you next week with more coffee number five. Fun everything you need at large mossman.com Or in the Episode Notes right below. Don’t forget to subscribe. We’re so glad to have you here today. See you next time. Catch you on the flip side. Ciao ciao.

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